Bullet by bullet, the bloggers win the war

There was a small explosion on the internet yesterday. Not many killed. One man outed, another reviled.

If you're no blog-o-naut or rabid Tweeter the entire affair may have passed you by, so here's the executive summary: a reporter at The Australian, James Massola, revealed the identity of the Canberra-based writer behind Grog's Gamut, a blog that soared to the outskirts of semi-fame during the election campaign after a thoughtful, savvy post on the serial deficiencies of our political press pack. Grog, it turns out, is Greg Jericho, a public servant.

It's a slightly bigger story than the tidy little sum of these parts, Grog'sgate was just a small skirmish in a bigger, dirty war.

In fact, let's take that metaphor and run with it, because in this discussion The Australian reminds me a little of the British at Rorke's Drift, a plucky band of Royal Engineers holding out to the last bullet against the internet as played by several thousand Zulus. The British, thanks in no small part to the singing prowess of Jack Hawkins, won that one of course, proving the superiority of well-disciplined musketry over a rampaging, disgruntled horde. I'm not so sure that the outcome in The Australian v. The Internets will play so well for the redcoats.

Grog/Jericho made the fatal mistake of making them angry, of impugning the conduct of Australian journalism during an election campaign in which the media slowly became a significant part of the story; not so much for what it did but for the debate it let rot and degenerate. Outing him is payback, I reckon. Make an example of him and worry the others.

The cited reason for the Australian's invasion of privacy was the offence given by Grog's online pseudonymity. A spurious case. Surely Jericho as Grog's can be judged on the quality of his argument, all of it set in the context of a consistent online presence in which you choose to place faith and trust. Or not. Your call. Little difference there to the old-school of newspaper that ran its copy without byline, investing all of it with the reputable stamp of the institution. This is also how the internet works: consistent voices in consistent spaces, aquiring audiences, trust and good will. The name? Does that matter?

The subtext here is that journalism is Real Work best done by Real and Qualified people with both Names and the authority of Serious Commercial News Organisations or, better, properly constituted multi-national media conglomerates.

Which is where we begin to sense the sense of anxiety manifest in the attack on Grog's privacy, the sense of siege and threat felt in newsrooms like The Australian's.

Journalism is a craft in some peril, not just because the internet challenges the business models of newspapers, but also because the internet has enabled many many people with something to say to simply get online and say it. This, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has been the province of The Journalist. Not any more.

Journalism flourished in the era in which the means of mass-communication were massive, industrial and centralised. Big institutions developed, based on the competitive advantages that went to the owners of printing plants. They gathered platoons of journalists around them sufficient to fill the yawning spaces between growing quantities of advertising.

The means of mass communication now fit in your pocket. Salient commentary on events can now be written by anybody and - zeitgeist willing - read around the world in an instant. This threatens the traditional hierarchy of information and power.

But maybe we should not be alarmed. Maybe we need not conflate the threats to the craft of journalism - real - with a sense of threat to the quality of public information - imagined. They may not be one and the same. Indeed, journalism has done little in the past decade or three to build trust in its audience, enhance its reputation or secure either its future or a sense of its necessity. As a million voices find an audience through the internet we have never been more blessed by intelligent analysis of events. And you don't need journalists to do it.

Reporting the breaking facts may also soon shake free of the journalistic stranglehold. Information is increasingly available through the same online revolution that has boosted the stocks of analysis and public discussion. The tools of coherent investigation are hardly unique to the craft of journalism.

The earth is shifting.

This is why blogs like Grog's Gamut are a threat to the waning journalistic establishment, because lucid, well written, and free, they represent the future. The stuffy newsrooms that have barely adjusted their practices or culture since the turn of the twentieth century do not. But they will fight to the death. Bullet by bullet.